Introduction

In March 2005, I bought a Canon EOS 20D. It's my first digital SLR. There are plenty of reviews on the Web which go into an exhaustive feature list with sample photos, so I'm not going to provide that. If that's what you want, drop by some of the following reviews:

Instead, I'm going to mention stuff that I particularly do or don't like about the camera (and the software supplied with it), and make some suggestions on what improvements I think its successor should have.

The Good Stuff

Just about everything, really. This is a great camera. Canon's advanced amateur DSLRs, of which this is the latest example, started out as digital versions of Canon's advanced amateur 35mm SLRs, so they started off with a good base of features. The DSLR line has now diverged a fair bit from the film SLR line; the 20D is more like its predecessor than it is like its current counterpart in the 35mm lineup. But the family resemblance is strong, and given how good the film SLRs are, that's a good thing.

Images are virtually noise-free at low ISOs. There is so little noise at 100 that images are, for practical purposes, noise-free. The noise level at 200 is only very marginally higher, and even at 400 the noise is very well controlled.
Noise isn't bad at higher ISOs. At higher ISOs, the noise gets worse, but it's way better than with equivalent-speed 35mm film, and noise reduction software can clean up a lot of the noise.
It's responsive. Pretty much everything it does, it does quickly. Canon's philosophy for DSLRs is shooting priority; if you're reviewing an image and you suddenly need to shoot, you don't have to go through a menu and back out of what you're doing first. You just half-press the shutter release button and the camera instantly switches into shooting mode. Switching between images while reviewing is quick. You can review recent images while the camera is still emptying other images from its buffer onto the card. This camera rarely leaves you waiting.
It's familiar. Having used its closest film relative for the last few years, and that camera's predecessor for a few years before that, the photo-side controls of the camera are already familiar. There's a lot of digital stuff which doesn't exist on a film body, of course, but using it as a camera is just the same as using a 35mm SLR would be. I believe that if I were to hand this camera to my father, who has an old 35mm SLR but has never had an autofocus SLR and probably never even touched a digital camera, I could teach him enough in one minute that he could put the camera to good use (assuming, of course, that I'd set up the digital parameters).

The Bad Stuff

Too much software - the camera ships with a CD including a file viewer and raw file converter. It also ships with a second CD includnig a different file viewer and raw file converter. Why? I dunno; nothing on either CD explains this. Which one should I use? I dunno; nothing on either CD explains this. Really, they should be rolled into one program which has the capabilities of both.
No support for RAW via WIA/TWAIN - neither of the raw file converters work the way they should. They make you load up the RAW file, convert it, save it to an intermediate file, then fire up your image editor and work on it. My scanner's software can do this, too, but it also has a better way: it's a WIA/TWAIN app. The way it should work, and the way my scanner's software works, is that you fire up your image editor, tell it to import an image, and up pops the software (a raw converter in the case of the 20D; the scanner software in the case of the scanner). Yes, I understand, they way they're set up works well for some people. For instance, if you have a bunch of files and you want to batch convert them to JPEG or TIFF without doing any further editing. But just because that's a good way to do your work some of the time doesn't mean it's a good way to do your work all of the time, and other options should be provided.
The shutter is too loud - Granted, I've been spoiled, coming from an EOS Elan 7E, which has one of the quietest shutters (and mirrors) in any SLR, and before that I had an Elan II, which is almost as quiet as the Elan 7E. But the 20D's shutter isn't slightly louder; it's much louder. It's annoying.
Safety shift should include ISO - this camera, like some of Canon's semi-pro and pro cameras, includes a safety shift feature (custom function 16). If you're in aperture or shutter priority, and the aperture/shutter speed you've selected makes a correct exposure impossible, safety shift lets the camera adjust your selected aperture/shutter speed just enough to enable a correct exposure. Nice. But this one is stuck in the film paradigm, in which only shutter speed and aperture can be changed. This is digital, and the right way to do this is to adjust the ISO if possible, so that the user's selected aperture/shutter speed remains in effect. So CF16 should have three options: 0 (off, same as it is now), 1 (adjust selected aperture or shutter speed, same as it is now), and a new option 2 (adjust ISO; if no further ISO adjustment is possible, then adjust selected aperture or shutter speed). Nikon's D70 can adjust ISO automatically, when necessary, to ensure a correct exposure.
ISO should be displayed - Again, this is a leftover from the film world, in which you set an ISO and leave it there. The only times your selected ISO is displayed are if you're changing it, or if you use the INFO button to display the camera's current settings. ISO is so important that it really ought to be one of the things permanently displayed on the top LCD panel.
SET button should change ISO - custom function 1 lets you assign a meaning to the SET button when it's not in use as part of the menu system. They should add another option, which is that the SET button should be a quick way of changing ISO.
SET button should display in viewfinder - if you use custom function 1 as a quick way of changing the quality or parameter settings, it only displays on the top LCD. It would be nice if it could display in the viewfinder as well, so you have the option of changing the settings without having to pull the camera away from your eyes. The alphanumeric display in the viewfinder has everything it needs to display parameters, and while it doesn't have the icons for sizes and qualities, surely there's a way to figure out how to display something like that; you wouldn't have to add very many segments to let it display R (raw), M (medium), and N (normal) and it already has the segments needed to display S (small), L (large), and F (fine). And the viewfinder already has all the digits it needs for my previous notion of changing ISO.
A-DEP instead of DEP - Dumb, dumb, dumb. Canon's cameras have modes in which the camera will automatically select the correct focus distance and aperture to give you the depth of field you want. There are two such modes. Low-end cameras use A-DEP, in which the user has no way of telling the camera which things should be in focus; the camera guesses, or maybe it tries to make everything that's covered by a focus point be within the DOF. Advanced amateur cameras and pro bodies have DEP, in which you use the focus points to tell the camera what the nearest and farthest limits of DOF should be. The 20D is an advanced amateur body (Canon even claims it's suitable for some pro use), yet it has the brain-damaged A-DEP mode. Supposedly this was done because there wasn't enough room in the camera's firmware for a proper DEP mode. So put a bit more flash in the thing and make room. It'll add, what, ten bucks to the price?
E3 remote release connector instead of N3 - Canon's amateur SLRs have traditionally used one type of remote shutter release, while the pro SLRs have used another (and the older pro cameras use a third type, though at least Canon makes available a converter between the two pro connectins). This in itself is pretty silly, as the two have exactly the same functionality, and wiring diagrams available online show that the three conductors have exactly the same purposes in the E3 and N3 remotes. But for some reason Canon has decided that its advanced amateur DSLRs should use the pro release, not the release its advanced amateur film SLRs use. And the pro one is over twice the price of the amateur one. Did I mention that the two releases have exactly the same functionality?

What Should Come Next

Of course, everything I complained about should be fixed in the 20D's successor! In addition to that, here are some suggestions.

Eye-Controlled Focusing - I have this on my Elan 7E, and it's the most natural way of selecting a focus point. Think about it. At the moment you activate the camera's AF system, where are you looking in the viewfinder? You're looking at the subject - the thing you want to make sure is in focus! So the camera automatically focuses on it. The multi-controller on the 20D works well, particularly with custom function 13 set to 1. But nowhere near as well as ECF does. It continues to perplex me why Canon has not even made this an option on any DSLR.
Improved dynamic range - I know this is an issue with pretty well all digital cameras, and I'm sure Canon is working on a solution. I also know it's a tough one to solve. But hey, that's their engineers' problem, not mine.
Make the pop-up flash a master - Canon has a wireless multiple-flash system, where the flash mounted on the camera (master) signals to the others (slaves). Minolta has one, too, and in their system, the pop-up flash on the camera can be the master unit. Canon doesn't do this; only some of their most expensive external flash units can be masters. The pop-up flash could easily be set up to do this, but no.
Include focus distance in the EXIF data - for some strange reason, the focus distance always shows up as 0mm. Now, some lenses don't report focus distance to the camera, but most of mine do. Yes, this is nitpicking :-) but if you're going to give me a pile of EXIF data with information about the settings, and if you're going to include an item saying what the focus distance is, why not actually put the focus distance there? This camera's predecessor (the 10D) did, and unlike the 20D, that camera didn't actually use distance information for anything (one of the major new features in the 20D is an improved flash metering system, and one of the things it does is to use distance information if available).
A bigger LCD screen would be nice. Some of Canon's competitors have screens up to about 40% bigger than the one on the 20D.

people have visited this page since it was created on 14 April 2005.
Return to writings index
Return to photo page
Return to home page